Don't You Know People Write Songs About Girls Like You
by Xairathan
Summary: Some Asuka and Rei bonding between Zeruel and Arael


Things have been the same since Shinji disappeared into the entry plug of Unit-01. Misato is never at the apartment; she's always at NERV, which leaves Asuka alone in their abandoned living space to listen to the same five CDs she'd brought over from Germany. She has the cup noodles in the cabinets that she subsists off of and the beer that Misato's secretly kept stockpiled in the fridge. Asuka hasn't touched the beer; there are some lines that, despite her self-proclaimed maturity, she won't allow herself to cross. The epitome of an EVA pilot will have their mind uninhibited by foreign substances.

Then again, Asuka is far from the epitome of piloting. As far as she's concerned, her profession no longer has an embodiment. The only person who might have been considered it is now gone- dead, perhaps- leaving behind a doll and... what? Asuka is hesitant to classify herself as a failure, but it seems like she might be nothing but that.

Something moves in the hall outside, scraping against the floor. Asuka didn't hear Misato come into the apartment, but it must be her. Maybe she's finally given up hope of retrieving Shinji, which Asuka has, and which she's secretly hoped (and hated herself for hoping) that Misato might. What use would there be in chasing a dead pilot when there were two perfectly functional ones still alive? Again, Asuka hesitates to classify herself as functional, much less perfect. If another Angel shows up, she'll fight, and she'll probably die. Her only consolation lies in that there is one pilot worse than her, and the Angel will probably go for that pilot first.

Suddenly, a screeching. Asuka hasn't heard anything like it, but she's seen the recordings of the fights against the Angels that attacked prior to her own arrival. This one sounds like the Fifth. But there hadn't been any siren, no call from Misato trying to summon her to the Geofront, which means- which means-

Either NERV has decided Asuka is useless as a pilot and abandoned her, or the impossible and yet more welcome alternative: that the Fifteenth Angel is here, and it has come to kill Asuka personally for her failings.

Asuka rips her headphones from over her head and tosses them onto the bed. Whatever's outside in the living room, she'll face it with as much dignity as she's got left. That amounts to a set of half-slouched shoulders and hands that shake as they rise to open the door. The marks of the Fourteenth Angel have not yet fully left her body.

She pushes the door open and steps out into the hall, finds it empty. There are shuffling sounds now, coming from the living room. Asuka considers darting through it, hopefully before the Angel can notice her, and throwing herself from the window. Would that be a quicker death than trying to fight it with her own hands?

"I don't want to die," Asuka says. Her voice registers as a slurred, drunken-sounding mumble in her ears. She staggers toward the living room, her hand pressed up against the wall as a guide.

She passes the bed in the hall and stares unblinkingly into the light coming through the window, its passage interrupted by a small figure standing in the center of the room. Not an Angel, but just as bad- Rei Ayanami, come to add insult to injury, or something along those lines.

"What are you doing here?" Asuka snaps. Her voice is perhaps the only uninjured part of her, and it rings with venom across the living room. Rei looks up from where she's crouched on the floor, fiddling with something in her hands. Around her are the pieces of Misato's old training set, the mats Asuka had used to synchronize with Shinji. So that's what was coming through the hall earlier. It's a realization that should bring Asuka comfort, but only stirs up the anger festering in her gut. "Well?!"

"We need to be ready," Rei says. "If an Angel comes now, we are the ones who will fight it."

"Is this more of Misato's bullshit?" Asuka steps out into the living room, folding her arms over her chest. She used to take so much pride in this position; now it hurts to keep her arms held like this for longer than a few moments, and breathing in this position takes twice as much effort. "If Misato wants me to do something, she can tell me herself!"

"This is not an assignment of Major Katsuragi's own design. I have come here of my own initiative."

"And why would you do that?"

"We are pilots. We must be prepared to pilot. That is the logical progression of things."

"Oh, shut up, will you?" Asuka throws her hands to her sides, unable to hold them across her chest for any longer. She sees in Rei's cold eyes how childish this must be, how immature she's acting despite all her claims. There's that thought again, the one about jumping out the window- but maybe she should take Rei with her, so she'll at least get some satisfaction out of it. "This is stupid!" she rages. "If another Angel comes, we're going to lose anyway. Without Shinji, we can't do anything! I know it, and you do, too! We couldn't do anything!"

Rei connects the last set of wires and stands, watches Asuka expend herself. Asuka thinks she has never hated Rei more than in that moment, hated that perfect doll of Ikari's. She watches Rei's lips part, hears the dreaded intake of air that means Rei is about to speak.

"Are you admitting that you are not the best, Pilot Soryu?"

"You were there. Don't deny it. It's not like we could've done anything against the last Angel."

"No, but I tried."

"Oh, and what do you think I did? Stood there and cried?"

"Is that not what you are doing now?"

"That's not the point!" Asuka shouts, casting her mind around for anything she can use to continue their argument. Even in such a state, she won't concede anything to the First Child. She'd rather die before that day comes. "Okay, fine. If you wanted us to go get ready to get our asses handed to us, why didn't you just call me down to the simulation chamber?"

"It would be impractical. NERV is focusing its efforts on trying to retrieve Pilot Ikari. If we attempted to use the simulation chamber, we would only-"

"Okay, fine! I get it!" Asuka doesn't remember taking those two steps towards Rei, or when she clenched her fists so tightly her arms started to shake. There's no way she'll be able to pick Rei up and throw her out of the apartment in this state, even though the First Child is equally injured. Asuka mutters through clenched teeth, "If I do this, will you leave?"

"I will."

"Fine." Asuka reaches up and shoves Rei back, sending her staggering onto one of the mats. She walks over to the other one and stations herself on the circles, glaring down at them. "Don't think this means I agree with you, you got it? I just want you to leave," Asuka says. Really, she doesn't know why she's agreed to this. She could always shout Rei into silence, scream at her until she leaves. No- Asuka knows why, but she doesn't want to admit that she misses Shinji so much that it puts a sick sort of burning in her stomach; doesn't want Rei to know that she's so sore for some form of human contact that she'll agree to even something as demeaning as this.

Asuka reaches for the headset lying by her feet and slips it on, wondering if it'll even work, if Rei has managed to assemble the training mats successfully. For some reason Asuka knows it won't be a problem. Rei is many things that Asuka loathes, but she is not incompetent.

The buzzer to start goes off. Both girls move in sync: one foot back, one arm on the circle two rows forward. Asuka is the first to slip, her injured arms yielding and sending her tumbling onto her back with a stuttering gasp. Rei stops herself in mid-motion as the circles beneath her flicker off, her hands shaking. It would seem that all of Rei is shaking; it's either that, or Asuka herself is the one trembling.

"Again!" Asuka snaps. She sits up, forcing herself to rise without using her hands. Her body quivers imperceptibly- a painful clenching of the muscles in her torso- but she doesn't let on that anything is wrong. She will show no weakness to Rei; she will prove, if not to Rei then to herself, that Asuka Langley Soryu is still the superior of them both.

They begin again. Asuka reaches for each circle, her limbs sluggish and slower than she'd like. This time, Rei falls before she does, toppling silently to lie on the floor with one arm pinned beneath her. Asuka turns to glower triumphantly and finds her gaze met with Rei's. There's something in those red eyes that's unfamiliar to Asuka- she hadn't imagined Rei capable of feeling thing such as agony or shame- but the feeling of victory that had begun to gather in her chest dissipates like wispy smoke.

"If you can't even move, what's the point of all this?" Asuka snaps. Never mind that her own arms are still bruised, that she wakes up in the middle of the night seized by cramps. No, it's not just that- Asuka took the brunt of the Fourteenth Angel's offensive; Rei blew herself back with an N2 mine. Asuka shouldn't find pity in herself for someone as suicidally stupid as that, and yet she does- there's a bit of herself in that gesture, a desperation not to be defeated so much so that she'll pay any cost.

Asuka inhales sharply, the line of her mouth settling into a vicious frown, and turns on her heel. She storms over to her room and slams the door behind her, rattling the frame. Only when she's thrown herself down upon the bed does she realize she hadn't bothered to remove the headphones from the training mat, and she can't bring herself to now. What solace she'd found in the music before is gone, probably hiding out wherever her satisfaction at being better than Rei has gone to.

From the hall comes another shuffling noise, and a shadow situates itself in front of Asuka's door. "Are you giving up?" Asuka hears Rei ask, her soft voice muffled by the walls and the headphones that Asuka still hasn't taken off.

"Go away!"

"I am not going anywhere, Pilot Soryu."

"Why not? I don't want you here!"

"Because you are alone, and I know you do not wish to be."

Hot, fierce laughter spills from Asuka's lips like magma. She rips the headphones off and slams them against the bed sheets with a fist. "Really?" she asks. "Really. You know? You don't know anything. You don't know the first thing about me, First. You're a doll! An emotionless, cold doll! You wouldn't know anything about how I _feel_!"

"You are right, Soryu," Rei says, and Asuka chokes on the air she's been forcing through her lungs. "I know little of emotions. They are irrelevant to my purpose. But I have been around you and Ikari, and I know enough to feel what loneliness is like. It is cold, as you described."

Rei lifts her eyes, and a crack has appeared between the door and the frame. Asuka's eyes shine out at her from the crack, scrutinizing her. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't tell you to leave right now," she says. It's the first thing she's truly said to Rei all day, rather than shouted.

"If you really wanted me gone, you would have made it so." Rei briefly averts her gaze to stare down the hall at the front door. "You know I would not have resisted had you attempted to evict me by force. That I am still here means you must want me here to some extent."

Rei isn't wrong, not entirely. It would seem Rei hasn't taken into account Asuka's physical state- or, knowing her, she has. Which would make this an admission of how strong Asuka is, or at least, how strong Rei believes her to be. Asuka nudges the door open with her shoulder and steps forward to stand in it, blocking Rei's way into her room.

"Well, then what the hell are we going to do?" she asks. "You're the reason we can't do that stupid mat exercise."

"It was the first thing I could think of. I suppose I thought poorly." Rei lowers her gaze, and again Asuka catches the glimmer of shame in it. She steps forward- more of a lurch- and places her aching arms atop Rei's shoulders. Rei's cheek bumps against her collarbone, and when Asuka looks down she is met by Rei's upturned, confused face.

"I'm stretching my arms out," Asuka says, like this is obvious and she's expected Rei to have come to the same conclusion. "You rest against me. You're in no shape to do anything today, so today we'll do this, and tomorrow we'll train."

"This makes no sense," Rei sighs, and yet she remains. As odd as their situation is, there's something to it that makes her want to stay like this with Asuka's arms draped around her. It takes her a moment to figure out; when she does, she closes her eyes and allows herself to relax in Asuka's arms. The loneliness she's felt has always been cold and empty. It would stand that its antithesis is warmth.


End file.
